Five Questions With: Wendy Unsworth, author of The Palaver Tree (to-read list)

Hello Readers, 

Here is an interview with Wendy Unsworth. Her book, The Palaver Tree, is on my to-read list. This is the first book in the Berriwood Series. It revolves around a young teacher, Ellie Hathaway, who is volunteering at a school in Africa. 

From the Synopsis: 

Lives and fortunes change in the blink of an eye.

Now that she is alone, volunteering at a school in the Central African Republic of Ducana seems like everything schoolteacher Ellie Hathaway needs. Here is the opportunity to get away from the sleepy Cornish village where recent tragedy still haunts her and to help the children's charity her friend has worked so tirelessly to promote.

But dark forces and ambitions are in play long before Ellie's arrival in the dusty town of Limba. Even as she begins to believe she can at last find true happiness, she realises that something at the school is very wrong. 

Is this really the place of loving and giving she had first thought it to be, and is headmaster, Gabriel Cole, really their guardian angel?

With so many questions left unanswered Ellie struggles to decide what she must do, but then political chaos descends and suddenly Ellie finds herself more alone than she had ever imagined she could be....

Enjoy the interview below!

1. Tell me about yourself and how you first got interested in writing?

Hello! My name is Wendy Unsworth and thank you for inviting me here. I was born in Lincolnshire, England which is a beautiful part of the world but I am a born traveller and so it is a long time since I lived in the place of my birth!

Writing has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember and I firmly believe writing chose me, rather than the other way around

2. What inspired you to write The Palaver Tree?

 One of my main interests in fiction is taking very ordinary characters and plunging them into an extraordinary situation. I am fascinated about how they will react and cope, what strengths they will find and how often they will even surprise themselves. 

I lived in Central Africa for thirteen years. It was a hectic period of my life but a time that left a huge and lasting impression on me, so much so that, after leaving, I knew my first full length novel should incorporate some of my experiences there.

3. What's next on your plate?

Busy! Busy! At the moment I am writing the second book in my Berriwood series. The stories in the series are quite separate but feature the lives and fortunes of different members of the same English village. The second book is called 'Beneathwood' It is a story of loss, family secrets and superstition. 

I am also getting ready to publish the first book in my children's Come-alive Cottage series.The stories feature a plucky young girl, her Aunt Kitty who also happens to be a witch, and a lot of gone-wrongs spells! These are written for seven - nine year olds and are illustrated chapter books. 

4. Is there any particular writer or book that inspired you, either while growing up or as an adult?

Yes, books inspire me in many different ways. 

Books such as the 'Just William' series by Richmal Crompton and Jennings and Derbyshire by Anthony Buckeridge were such fun and inspired a young me to keep on reading. 

Authors such as Karen Maitland, Barbara Kingsolver, Stephen King and John Wyndham inspire me to keep on striving for something different.

5. What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

I was an aspiring author for sooo long! My advice would be, stay true to your characters, get the narrative as right as you possibly can and then don't delay, publishing a book is an amazing experience!

Five Questions With: Rysa Walker

Hello Everyone,

Sorry for not updating last week! I am less busy and back to reviewing :)

I recently had the opportunity to interview Rysa Walker, author of Time's Twisted Arrow, which I loved. You can see my review here. Read on to learn more about her and her work!

1. What is your background and how did you become interested in writing?

I've always been a writer in some form. I suspect it's because I lived in the middle of nowhere, ten miles from the nearest library, and had to read the same books over and over again. I loved my books, but when I got bored, I'd start thinking about what happened next. Or what might happen to those same characters in different circumstances. Or what might happen to different characters in similar circumstances. Sometimes the stories just played themselves out in my head, but many made their way to paper. And while I got sidetracked for a number of years writing non-fiction, I eventually made my way back around to writing the type of books I like to read.

2. What was the inspiration behind Time's Twisted Arrow?

I've spent the past few years teaching and writing about history and I think every historian secretly wants a time-machine. We're very much aware that history is often determined by those who write the history books -- George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree, for example, and many other historical events or achievements that get credited to one or two people in history books were more often the work of dozens of people behind the scenes. It's kind of like the line from the song "Wonderful" in my favorite musical, Wicked:

A man's called a traitor - or a liberator.
A rich man's a thief - or philanthropist.
Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader?
It's all in which label
Is able to persist.

So, knowing that things tend to get changed around depending on who is telling the story, it's not too surprising that historians think it would be nice to actually be there and see history in the making. But if we had that power, would we really be able to resist tweaking things just a bit here and there? I'd like to think I could resist, but I'm not especially power-hungry. I'm generally content with my books, my music, family -- as long as I have those things, plus good coffee, tea and dark chocolate, I'm a pretty happy camper. And while there are plenty of injustices I'd love to change in the world, I'd be worried that if you tug too hard at one or two less-than-lovely strings in the tapestry, everything else might come apart as well. But would someone who wanted wealth, power or who was truly unhappy with their society as a whole be able to resist changing things? I'm not so sure -- and that's really the key idea that eventually developed into Time's Twisted Arrow.

3. What's next for Kate?

Kate will be back at the end of 2013 in Pendulum Past, the second book of the CHRONOS Files. That book picks up shortly after the end of Time's Twisted Arrow. Much of the book will be set in the racially-divided South of the 1930s, with Kate taking some side trips to the 1960s and Boston in the early 1900s. She's going to face some difficult choices in her efforts to stop the Cyrists and will have to decide whether she can live with committing "lesser evils" in order to further the "greater good." And, on a personal level, she'll be learning whether you can recreate the mysterious circumstances that cause two people to fall in love.

In the interim, readers will also see Kate briefly in a novella that I have coming out this summer. It's tentatively entitled Time's Echo, and reveals some of the events from Time's Twisted Arrow from Kiernan's perspective, while providing additional backstory on the Cyrists and their motives.

4. Besides the CHRONOS Files series, do you have any other projects coming up?

I have two additional series in various stages of development. The first book for one of the series will likely be published before the CHRONOS files is finished, because it's partially written. It was one of those cases where a story and characters popped into my head and just wouldn't leave me alone until I got something down on paper. The other series is still in that nebulous, embryonic stage where it could go in a couple of different directions-- but I think it will emerge eventually as a pretty cool series of paranormal detective books.

5. I found your website to be a very interesting supplement to the CHRONOS series (it inspired me to write a post on how books have changed with the advent of e-readers and "apps" which allow you to become completely immersed in a story). What are your thoughts on the impact of tablets and e-books on the literary world? Has it helped or harmed?

I'm a huge, huge fan of e-books. That's partly because, as I noted above, I spent way too much of my childhood wanting new books and having to wait for them. Santa brought me a Kindle a few years back and it rarely leaves my side. The fact that I can download a new book at soccer practice or waiting in the carpool line for my kids never ceases to delight me. The e-publishing revolution has also increased the number of stories out there. Some of them are admittedly a bit rough, but there are also some real gems. Several of the best books I've read this year were not "traditionally" published, and I suspect that they would never have been available for me to read if we were still stuck in the era where agents and major publishers were the gatekeepers for all fiction. I do think that traditional publishers serve an important role, but it's nice to see that there are multiple outlets these days. A freer market usually results in more innovation and I think we're just beginning to see the results of these changes.

On a broader scale, the internet makes the writer's job more fascinating, but it also provides distractions. Research is definitely easier. I can find out virtually anything I want to know about 1905 Boston if I dig deep enough into the resources online, and some of this is information that I'd never have had at my disposal a few decades ago. On the other hand, however, it's all too easy to chase an interesting rabbit down the hole and end up miles away from the core bits of information you need to write your story. I have to be careful to avoid spending too much time in the virtual past, otherwise it's tough to get the books written back here in 2012!

As for the CHRONOS Files site, I would love to have the resources (and the time) to do even more with it. One thing I'm really happy with, however, is that it can provide an outlet for young writers. I'm currently working with a number of teachers in middle and high schools to have students use the examples of historical research in the CHRONOS Files as a starting point for their own fiction and I will be showcasing some of their work on the blog. The goal is for them to learn about the historical sources that are now literally at their fingertips and how they can be incorporated into fiction, hopefully in a way that is a little less like "schoolwork" than writing a traditional history report.

Thanks so much for allowing me to visit with you and your readers at ChaiTime!

Important Day/Week

Tomorrow and this week will be very important for me and very hectic, so if I have not yet responded to your emails, please be patient. My posts will be less frequent until at least next Sunday. Sorry if I haven't gotten back to you!!

-- chaitime212

Poll: Format of Blog

Just posted a new poll regarding the layout of my blog. You can see it on the right side of my page. I am making a post here, because if you answer no, I want to know what needs improvement. 

Is my blog easy to read? Should I change the layout, the background, or something else? Please comment and let me know, I want to make this blog fun and I want to make it easy to find what you're looking for!

--chaitime212